Our need to be the best robs us

Last night my wife and I played Boggle. If you’re unfamiliar, Boggle is a word search game with 16 different dice, and a plastic grid that looks like a waffle. On each side of the dice is a different letter. You shake up the dice, they each fall into one of the slots in the waffle, and you have to find words with adjacent letters. 

In five two-minute rounds, I scored 15 points. My wife scored 50 points. She crushes me (and most people) at this game. I knew this going in, yet I still played, and had a good time. 

But, it wasn’t always like this. 

This past weekend, I ran a half marathon with my brother. In my group, 182 men age 30-34 ran faster than me. In the end, I finished 1,184th in the half marathon. I didn’t even come close to the top of my group, much less winning the race. Yet, I still ran it, and had a wonderful time.

But, it wasn’t always like this. 

I used to never want to play Boggle with my wife, because I knew she would smash me. I used to dread long distance running because I knew I wasn’t very fast. Then I started to realized that I can still have a good time doing both of these things, even if other people are better than me. 

Boggle and long distance running are interesting activities because, while they can be competitive, the experience of participating in them is entirely untainted by the competition. Someone else’s performance doesn’t hinder mine at all.

This begs the question: Why do we need to win so bad? Why are we so resistant to losing? Why does the performance of another person rob our joy of doing fun things? Are we so connected to the capitalistic machine that says we need to be the best at something in order to have value? Have we subscribed that deeply to these ideals? 

Just some musings. Happy Wednesday.